


Five days, forty-three nights

by Splinter



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Established Relationship, F/M, Furiosa is the most eaten out character in fandom history, Introspection, Pining, Post-Movie(s), canon-typical grief, canon-typical mental illness, mention of cunnilingus, mention of vaginal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7852261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/pseuds/Splinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the longest scouting trip Max has taken in many hundred days. He's not used to spending this much time away from Furiosa.</p><p>Established relationship pining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five days, forty-three nights

It’s familiar, and unfamiliar. Max has spent nearly half his life in the desert, watching for threats and getting by. This is just another scouting trip, but it’s the longest he’s taken alone in many hundred days. 

Since he began to settle at the Citadel, his journeys have got shorter, more widely spaced. He drives out with Furiosa on trade runs, goes scouting with her as well as on his own. It’s been a gradual shift. He’s surprised what a jolt this trip has been, to both of them, when it used to be commonplace.

Out west, beyond Buzzard territory, there’s been more movement, more wanderers passing through. Wasteland gossip is contradictory: a settlement has failed, or a settlement is rising. There’s not much to go on. Since Furiosa and the sisters toppled the region’s power structure, plenty of would-be warlords have tried to fill what they see as a vacuum. Things seem steady enough for the moment, but they’re still wary of what else has been stirred up. 

Max is the obvious person to check on it. He’s got the experience, they can spare him for that much time. It will take at least forty days, driving up towards Bartertown, stopping off at trading points for information. Unlike Furiosa, he’s nondescript enough to pass for another wastelander, not obviously Citadel, particularly if he wears a scarf over the brand on his neck. He’s good at picking up information, perhaps because he doesn’t ask for it. 

Now that he’s out here, he eases back into wasteland rhythms. It’s not as if he’s ever stopped using these skills – bartering, dealing with attacks, keeping an eye on the weather. The pace is different, but he hasn’t forgotten.

There are other things he remembers. He knows that the desert can soothe his ghosts, his grief, or make everything worse. Though his head is in better shape these days, he has a low-lying fear that his damage will come out, that his urge to run will assert itself. He’s mistrustful of the shifting weather, of his own altered moods. 

Staring into the desert, it’s as if his brain is settling into two layers. One part of him is observant, noting weather patterns, dust spirals, movements that might be signs of life. Underneath it, he gazes to the horizon and feels the pull of so much emptiness. 

Leaving hadn’t been a quick decision, this time. The news wasn’t urgent, more about keeping an eye on possible trouble. They’d decided to wait until after the next major trade run, five days away, seeing no need to hurry. 

He’d discovered that he needed those five days, that he and his car were no longer ready to go at a moment’s notice. He keeps the interceptor tuned up and well stocked, but for short trips. His bundle of emergency supplies has dwindled as he assumes that he’ll be coming back to the Citadel within a day or two. Without really planning it that way, it’s been more than a hundred days since he slept away from home. Facing a longer absence had been tougher than he’d expected.

Furiosa had been efficient, focused on getting everything done, not compromising on any of her other duties. Before he left, she’d prepared so thoroughly. He’d chosen his own supplies, only to find them quietly topped up – extra food, small tradeable goods tucked into pockets. She hadn’t touched the interceptor, but he kept finding neat blocks of supplies sitting next to it, ready to be packed. 

She’d talked the Dag into giving him a larger than usual allowance of plants and seeds for trading, and hardier produce for eating. The Dag is keen to get tougher varieties out into the desert, to encourage the spread of green, but there are some cherished plants she can’t help hoarding. Furiosa must have been persuasive.

All the sisters and all the Vuvalini had come to wave him off. He hadn’t expected so many hugs, even from Toast, who is usually teasing or gruff, and Cheedo, who can still be shy. Furiosa had been formal, not too demonstrative in public. But she’d wrapped her own scarf around his neck, her forehead against his as she tucked the ends in. The Dag had teased him about sleeping upright in his car, telling him that his bones would creak now he’d got used to a nice soft bed. She was wrong; sleeping in the interceptor is an old, old habit, and his body slides easily back into it. Sleeping flat again will probably take more adjustment.

What’s hard is waking up. Coming out of sleep, he’s not in control of his own expectations. He’s got used to finding himself tangled safe and soft around Furiosa, snuggling closer before he’s really awake. Or the times he wakes first and there she is, her face and body relaxed in sleep. He loves it, has always loved it, even in the early days when he was struggling with feelings he’d spent thousands of days trying to burn away. 

He has been as violent and brutal as the wasteland could make him. So has she. They have histories that they will never escape. Waking isn’t always sweet: they have nightmares and night terrors, moments of panic and claustrophobia. That he can curl himself gently around her, smell her skin and feel her heartbeat, feels magical. It’s like finding tender green shoots in the desert, something that shouldn’t survive but is here and growing. It can still frighten him.

The desert only offers so much time for introspection. There’s a stirring of dust on the ridge, a glint of light that shouldn’t be there. Within seconds, Max is braced for a fight, handgun ready. He’s parked in deep shadows, may not have been spotted yet. This is a water source, reasonably well known – a trickle through red rocks, not enough to sustain a community but a godsend for travellers. 

The movement turns out to be a rattling truck, slowing as it gets closer: they’ve seen him. Over the rattles, he can hear a thumping noise, the passenger’s hand hitting the door three times. The driver is trying a triple toot on the horn, but there’s not much sound coming out. It’s not a signal Max has heard for a while, but he recognises it as a request for truce. He taps his own door three times – quieter than the horn, in earshot of the truck but no one else. He doesn’t put the gun down. 

The truck pulls up, not too close. The driver, a dark-skinned woman with hair plaited in a crown, has a gun in her hand, but is displaying rather than aiming it. Max nods to her.

“Cactus is good,” he says, tilting his head towards a little group of succulents as he gets a look at her crew. A second woman, an older man, two young children and a teenaged boy. A family group, probably found family: there’s a scattering of tattoos and body mods among the adults, nothing consistent enough to suggest a clan. He’s careful to move slowly, not to do anything that looks threatening.

“Where are you headed?” The driver’s wary, but not aggressive; nods when he says Bartertown.

It turns out that they’ve left a fallen settlement, perhaps the one he’s been hearing about. It’s a familiar story: factions springing up after the death of a previous leader. One side got religion, the other just got brutal. The water supply started failing as they fought it out – chance, or divine intervention, or more likely just bad management. Bartertown is, if not the land of opportunity, at least better run than the mess they’re getting out of. 

When Max mentions the Citadel, the second woman scoffs: a wasteland fairytale of abundant water and brides who had ripped the face from a god. He doesn’t correct her on the details.

“Besides,” says the driver. “Got family in Bartertown.” Her sister is a smith, has already offered to teach the kids her trade. It’s not a bad option. Max shrugs, trades them a little guzz for some of their junk salvage. He throws in a couple of his green citrus fruits. The kids look healthy enough, but could probably do with more vitamins.

While they’re checking over vehicles, getting ready to move on, he hears more about the settlement, which was known as Red Water. People have been leaving in droves. Some set off for a promised oasis – which, amazingly, seems to exist: traders have returned. This little group don’t trust it, prefer the certainty of Bartertown. It explains a lot of the rumours that have reached the Citadel, but doesn’t sound like a threat.

When he moves on, he aims, not for Red Water, but for the new oasis. A few stops along the way help him pinpoint the direction, confirming the details of the family’s story. Once, he sees a child who reminds him of Glory, giving him a moment’s panic. Then he realises it’s a different face under the bouncing curls, a living wastelander rather than one of his ghosts.

He leaves that settlement in a hurry, but that only means he’s alone sooner. He drives fast, pushing on to get to the new outpost. The threat of seeing Glory and the others isn’t the worst part. What frightens him is the urge to let go, to risk those ghosts in the hope of seeing others. If he wanders the desert, his memories of Jessie and Sprog wander it, too. Coming out of madness has always meant leaving them behind. 

When he finds the oasis, it’s more promising than he’d hoped. There’s some shelter in a broken cliff, and signs of vegetation around the water source. The crops aren’t exactly flourishing, by Citadel standards, but they’re not dead either. Housing has been rigged up out of scrap metal and salvage. There’s not much in the way of defence, but an attack would probably wipe out the thin, sandy soil that makes this place valuable. 

He recognises one of the women – the way you sometimes do find a familiar face out here. Park is a grandmother, or maybe a great-grandmother by now, a Vuvalini under the skin. She was a mechanic when he met her last, but he’s not surprised to find that she’s the chief agriculturalist. He gives her a silvery plant whose roots attract edible grubs, and the bush potato the Dag has been experimenting with.

“Purple flowers,” he explains. “Roots you can eat.” The rest of the group look cautiously interested. The stew they share is bitter, suggesting a dubious attempt to create flavour with limited resources, but filling. Park gives Max a nudge as the meal ends. 

“Long times since I’ve seen you. How’s that young woman of yours?” He has no idea how she knew. Last time he’d seen her, not long after the fury road, everyone had wanted the story; it had been worth putting better information out there. He’d mentioned Furiosa, when they’d asked, but he doesn’t think he talked about her more often than any of the others. It had been before his own first return to the Citadel, before he had any kind of claim on her. Park grins at him.

The first time they’d met, all those days ago, he’d suggested there might be a place for Park at the Citadel. She’d given him a too-sharp look of recognition, and replied that she still needed the wasteland. He’d wondered what and who she’d lost. It will have been both, he knows that much. She seems less restless, now. 

The little group give him a friendly goodbye when he leaves in the morning. They’re already keeping an eye out for local news; he doesn’t need to ask them to do that. He leaves behind the junk salvage, which might actually make good building material. Before he goes, Park gives him a small, chipped shell, the mother-of-pearl still shiny inside.

“For luck,” she tells him. “Or give it to her, if you think she’ll like it.” Max doesn’t know what to say, but he puts the shell in one of the interceptor’s hidden compartments before heading for Bartertown. He passes the troubled settlement on the way, getting fired at by people with highly decorated uniforms, who start shooting long before they have a chance of hitting him. The walls are pocked with bullets, and the place looks down-at-heel. 

That aside, the drive to Bartertown is easy. The car’s running well; the engine is in beautiful shape, handling smooth as oil. Furiosa is scrupulous about the interceptor, keeps her hands off unless specifically invited, but they’d both worked on it this time. He remembers the look she gets over fine-tuning, the way she’ll nudge and nudge at something until it’s running at its best. It’s like the sharp little tug she gives her buckles when she puts her arm on, decisive and exact. 

He realises he’s getting hard as he thinks of her, and shakes his head to clear it. He can’t afford to be fuzzy or distracted in Bartertown. He wonders if he should stop and take care of it.

He keeps being reminded of her: the way she holds a spanner, the little snuffling noise she sometimes makes waking up. She is so fierce and so proud, driving forward over bad ground and her own jagged edges. She lets herself be vulnerable to him, helps him to do the same. Sometimes it scares both of them. He wants so badly to be reliable for her, to comfort her when she needs it, to hold her close and safe.

The nearer his departure had loomed, the more he’d wanted her, touching her every chance he got. Half the time, they’d fucked against the door of her room, too impatient to make it to the bed. He’d gone down on her in the machine shop, under the rig, Furiosa on her back on a crawler with her leathers pulled down and his face between her legs. He wishes that it had been under the interceptor he’s driving now, though he knows it doesn’t have enough ground clearance – even under the rig, he’d bashed his head climbing off her. It had been worth it, getting his mouth on her in the garage, a moment of private hunger in the noisy stone room. He wonders if she thinks of it when she drives the rig out. 

He’d been just as urgent the night before he left, but she had stopped him, made him slow down. She’d kissed his shoulders, neck and face, stroking herself and him. Finally she’d climbed on top and fucked him very slowly, teasing a long, shuddering orgasm out of him. They’d both slept deeply afterwards. 

He’d stayed wrapped around her in the morning, his hands and mouth all over her, skimping a little on washing when they got up. He was basically clean – the wasteland is dirty enough without starting out crusty – but he’d wanted to keep the scent of her on his skin. He needs something to hold onto in the desert, something to stop him drifting with the sand. 

He idles through Bartertown, carefully casual. He’s got salvage to trade, Citadel aqua-cola if it comes to it, so he can afford to look at the expensive stalls, listening for gossip. He comes up against one of the new generals of Red Water – there to trade, but with small resources and big talk. Between that and the pockmarked walls, he guesses the place will be dead within a hundred days. They’ll need to keep an eye on what happens afterwards.

He trades away some seeds, but Bartertown is better for tools than for green. All the seeds he sees for sale look damaged; he doesn’t trust their radiation levels. He does pick up some lenses, glass uncracked. A junk stall has wordburgers – a picture book of fairy tales, with images of seas and forests, a weird book on cooking that is mostly impossible recipes but might have some plant lore. As he goes, he confirms that he’s from the Citadel, lets it be seen that he’s got high-quality barter, shows no interest in confrontation. It’s a careful balance, particularly when you mostly speak in grunts.

Back in his car, he packs away his new finds, and checks that Park’s shell is safe in its small pocket. He doesn’t need to hide his brand here, but settles the scarf closer around his neck anyway. He can’t smell Furiosa on it any more. 

Max sits for a long moment, gazing at the red horizon, feeling the temptation of so much nothing. There are flickers at the edge of his vision, dust devils that might be ghosts. He thinks of the little girl who wasn’t Glory, thinks of Jessie and Sprog. 

He enters the killswitch sequence, and heads for home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at [lurkinghistoric](http://lurkinghistoric.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.
> 
> I wrote [Max and Furiosa under the rig](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7870222) as a smutty extra fic for this one.


End file.
